Research at DFKI

Because of the increasingly short cycles of innovation in the field of information technology, the lines between research, application related development, and conversion to products are becoming blurred. This is why DFKI entire spectrum from basic application-based research to market and customer oriented development of product functions.

DFKI is and was involved in many large national and international projects. For example, DFKI coordinated Verbmobil, a large German project on the translation of spoken language between German, Japanese and English.

The SmartKom project developed and evaluates totally new forms of Dialog-based Human-Technology Interaction by Coordinated Analysis and Generation of Multiple Modalities. The BMBF-Projekt SmartWeb aimed at developing the first mobile answering machine on the basis of semantic Internet services.

In the project SemProM (Semantic Product Memory), the Innovation Alliance Digital Product Memory has developed key technologies for the Internet of Things. Based on active digital product memories, the goal of the project RES-COM is to systematicly develop a innovative technology base for context activated ressource protection.

With IVIP, DFKI showed, in cooperation with its project partners John Deere and Agricultural Management Solutions (AMS), how the methods of intelligent Knowledge Management optimize the growing of energy plants, adding to the betterment of the environmental footprint of renewable energies.

In the RIMRES Project (Reconfigurable Integrated Multi-Robot Exploration System), core technologies for robot teams are developed for the exploration of other planets. Complex tasks, e.g. navigation on difficult-to-access terrain, own energy supply, and data recording are efficiently solved. The space vehicle Sherpa serves as platform: On its four leg-wheel-constructions it covers large distances, carrying a legged robot to its destination, for example the free-climbing SpaceClimber developed for crater missions; and a manipulator arm lifts payloads, supports its locomotion, and controls the vehicle with an integrated camera.

The research program THESEUS of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology aims at developing a new internet based knowledge infrastructure in order to better deploy and make use of the information contained in the internet. In the context of innovative basic technologies, this research department is responsible for the work package "situation-aware dialogue shell" in which multimodal interfaces for dialogue interaction between man and machine are realized. Thus, users can formulate their questions intuitively and refine them during the dialogue with the system.

The research project Alliance Digital Product Flow (Allianz Digitaler Warenfluss, ADiWa) aims to explore technologies for business applications for planning, controlling and executing complex and dynamic business processes via the ”Internet of things". Up to now technologies of the Internet of things have been used in practice to identify objects or automize data entry for individual process steps, such as in- and output of goods. The aim is to capture and analyze all events occurring on the object with the tools and methods to be explored in ADiWa and therefore plan, control and optimize the entire business process flow of goods and information under economic and ecological aspects.

The software cluster "Software Innovations for the Digital Enterprise" is advancing the technological and methodological research and development of software solutions for the digital enterprise. Many partners from industry and research organizations among them DFKI work on the research and development of basic methods, techniques, algorithms and data structures for "emergent" software in the project “Fundamentals of Emergent Software”. Another project "Process innovation in the software industry" is being promoted coordinated by DFKI strengthening the competitiveness of software companies through the development of economic methods for the management of innovation processes in software development and innovative business models for the economic exploitation of software.

In the Alliance “SmartSenior - Intelligent Services and Services for the Elderly” R & D services in information and communication technologies are being lead beyond the research phase to broad deployment in a horizontally oriented cooperation between industry and science. Concepts, prototypes, and services are being developed to improve the interaction between technical and social systems with the aim of improving the quality of life for all people concerned, including their family members. DFKI is involved in the areas of interaction, usability and security solutions.